Alongside the art of the book, which was promoted by rulers at their courts and by religious scholars in mosques and Qur’an schools, Arabic calligraphy was also cultivated in the context of everyday religious practice. The popular calligraphy of Sufis and dervishes is an example of artistic expression which reflects piety and spirituality to a particular extent. Characterized by the harmony of their lines and the magic of their beauty, many of these works exhibit a special aura: decorating the walls of aesthetically designed rooms in dervish lodges (khanqah, tekke), they create not only an important visual dimension in veneration and...

In Islam hoarding gold and silver is denounced in the Qur’an and willyet artists have long used these metals in a variety of artistic forms Gold has a long history of decorative use in the Middle East starting with Egypt and continuing through Sumer, Babylon, Greece and Rome. In Islam, hoarding gold and silver is denounced in the Qur’an [Chap. 7, V. 34 and 35] and will result in punishment in the afterlife; accumulating it to use in God’s way was not and Islamic traditions [hadith] reinforced this. In spite of this, the prohibition seems never to have stopped the use of...

One of the major contributions of the Islamic civilization was in the field of art as it went beyond the limited traditional concepts of direct representation through painting human figures or sculpting animate statues and transcended to the infinite world of abstract designs. These new invented designs introduce the viewer to new horizons where he can break loose from the confinement of time and the restriction of place and takes him to a new world where he transcends beyond the visible to take a glimpse of the beauty of the unseen.The indirect, stylized impersonal abstract art of Islam symbolizes...